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The 49ers Are Waiting Too Long to Extend George Kittle's Contract

What are the 49ers waiting for?
Grant Cohn|
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (85) prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

What are the 49ers waiting for?

Every year, they take forever to extend their own best players. And while they wait, the market often shifts in the players' favor. That's what happened to Brandon Aiyuk last year, and it's what's happening to George Kittle now.

As soon as the 49ers' season ended, Kittle said on the record that he would love to sign an extension and finish his career in Santa Clara. They could have given him a contract extension worth $18 million per season, and that would have made him the highest-paid tight end in the NFL.

But they waited. Like they always do. And now, the market has changed because the Arizona Cardinals just gave tight end Trey McBride a four-year extension worth $19 million per season. Which means Kittle's price tag just jumped to $20 million per season at minimum.

Good going, 49ers.

I'm sure the 49ers eventually will pay Kittle what he wants. But if they had paid him first thing this offseason, they might have actually saved a couple million dollars, which is what they've been trying to do the past couple months. Instead, they're costing themselves money by being slow and indecisive.

They did this last year with Aiyuk. They could have given him an extension in 2023 that would have paid him $25 million per season. But they waited until 2024. And by then, the wide receiver market had exploded, and suddenly he was worth $30 million per season. And they paid him. And now they clearly regret it.

Time to change your negotiation tactics.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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